tattoo on one spot. All the beauty and all
the art of her dance consisted in that she would now bow her little
head and look out provokingly from under her eyebrows, then suddenly
toss it back and let her eyelashes down and spread her hands out at her
sides; and also in that in measure with the dance her enormous breasts
swayed and quivered under her red calico waist. During the dance she
was singing, now shuffling her heels, now the toes, of her goat-skin
shoes:

"The fiddle's playing on the street,
You can hear its bass so sweet;
My mother has me locked up neat,
My waitin' dearie I can't meet."

That was the very country-wife whom Lichonin knew; the self-same who
not only had had him for a client during hard times, but had even
extended him credit. She suddenly recognized Lichonin, darted to him,
embraced him, squeezed him to her bosom and kissed him straight on his
lips with her moist, warm, thick lips. Then she spread her arms out
wide, smote one palm against the other, intertwined her fingers, and
sweetly, as only Podolian wives can do it, began to coo:

"My little master, my little silver gold trove, my lovie! You forgive a
drunken wife like me, now. Well, what of it? I've gone op a spree!" She
then darted at him in an attempt to kiss his hand. "But then, I know
you ain't proud, like other gentry. Well, give me your hand,
dearie-dear; why, I want to kiss your little hand! No, no, no! I athk,
I athk you! ..." "Well, now, that's nonsense, Aunt Glycera!" Linchonin
interrupted her, unexpectedly becoming animated. "Let's best kiss just
so, now. Your lips are just too sweet!"

"Ah, my little sweetheart! My little bright sun, my little apple of
paradise, you," Glycera waxed tender, "give me your lips, then! Give me
your little lips to buss, then! ..."

She pressed him warmly to her gigantean bosom and again slavered over
him with her moist, warm, Hottentot lips. After that, she seized him by
his sleeve, brought him out into the middle of the ring, and began to
walk around him with a stately, mincing step, having bent her waist
coquettishly and vociferating:

"Oh, each to his taste, I want Paraska more,
For I've a divel in my pants
Her skirt holds somethin' for!"

And then suddenly she passed on, sustained by the musicians, to a most
rollicking, Little Russian, thumping GOPAK dance:

"Oh, Chook, that is too much,
You have soiled your apron too much.
Well, Prisko, don't